WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Warning: This clip has some nasty words. Don’t play it when the boss is around.

Though it wasn’t a phenomenon I’d ever really noticed until a friend of mine sent me the video clip above, once you’ve been made aware of it, the duck face does indeed seem to be ubiquitous and inescapable in the Facebook/MySpace universe. And what the heck is up with that?

Antiduckface.com, a Web site devoted to ending this plague by pointing out just how goofy it is, defines the duck face as “the pose where you push your mouth out in that sort of pout/kiss face to make it look like you’ve got big pouty lips, a super-defined jawline, and model-quality cheekbones” but wind up looking “really, really stupid.”

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

An assortment of news items (updated and annotated) from my Chicago Sun-Times columns of 21 years ago this week:

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Officially billed as”a festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art,” the three-day Sónar Music Festival has been taking place in Barcelona every year since 1994. Last year, it branched out to events in New York and Washington, D.C., and this year, it’s coming to Millennium Park and the Chicago Cultural Center just across Michigan Avenue on Sept. 9 to 11.

Performers at the fest, which was announced today, include Kid Koala’s “scratch-rock” project the Slew, electronica legends Oval, Martyn, Lesley Flanigan, Ben Frost, Nosaj Thing, Nicolas Bernier + Martin Messier: La Chambre des Machines, and Jimmy Edgar, as well as the Catalan artists Bradien, bRUNA, Huan, and Faraón.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Pistacchio Amaro now available in Old Town (photo: Steve Dolinsky)

I've been in love with pistacchio amaro cookies ever since I first popped them into my mouth, about a year ago.‚  Problem was, I didn't feel like schlepping out to Harlem Avenue every time I got a craving. Good news: Palermo Bakery is now open in Old Town, sharing the block with The Twisted Baker and Delightful Pastries. Unlike their neighbors, they'll also be serving homemade gelato. Mangia!

Locally-sourced food, served alfresco for a great cause

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Leida Villegas, also known as Lady Sol, has been describing how she first met “King” Charles, which led to the start of the FootworKINGz.

(by parthapc via Flickr)

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

There’s something eerie about La Casa de las Guayaberas in the heart of Little Havana. First, it’s just really quiet – sure, there’s salsa playing overhead, but it sounds faraway and tinny. Then there’s the general shadowiness – La Casa de las Guayaberas fends off Miami’s blistering sun with thick pull-down shades and what look like tinted windows. And the help can be curious: A shortish man in a dark suit, not a guayabera, his jacket draped over his shoulders like a cape, and aviator sunglasses waltzes across the floor to mutter about this or that guayabera.

At La Casa de las Guayaberas, the shiny surfaces sparkle in reflected light from so much plastic wrap protecting so many hundreds and hundreds of guayaberas. To show off the stock, the man in the dark glasses has to pull the racks apart. The guayaberas are packed in shoulder to pleated shoulder.

What’s a guayabera?

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

In the midst of our advertising-themed week, I had this idea:

I'm speaking at this conference outside New York on Thursday. I will be on some sort of stage. It will be filmed. And that's where our "product placement experiment" comes in.

Instead of touting actual products, how about in the middle of my talk I suddenly break out into a sort of hodge-podge serenade that we concoct together right here right now.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet